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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584018">a free choice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin'>zauberer_sirin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daisy feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Inhumans (Marvel), Introspection, Love Confessions, Mentions of Mack/Elena, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Unreliable Narrator, mentions of St Agnes, not team-friendly but tbf most of the team were shit to Daisy in season 4A</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:34:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,832</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s only a few moments afterwards that Coulson joins her next to the comm controls. Daisy is not surprised in the least and she doesn’t wish for him to change, exactly, but life would be easier if he did. Crappier, but easier.</i>
</p><p>  <i>“Full exposé on Quake,” Daisy quotes with a scoff, evading Coulson’s real question. “It barely featured any new information. Even the Watchdogs forums have better researchers.”</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Phil Coulson/Skye | Daisy Johnson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a free choice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is set post-4x08 but it's AU for everything after. That is, nothing after 4x08 happens in this story.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She retreats to the main comms panel, slipping away quietly, and hoping no one made much of her reaction. They all looked at her, of course, as soon as they said her name on the news segment, caught by the comms algorithm, but Daisy hoped her face didn’t betray everything she felt when one particular image showed up on the screen. </p><p>She is not used to having that much of an audience these days, and she has to re-learn to keep her face in check, something that used to come so easily. She touches the back of her neck, feeling annoyance and stress pooling and knotting the muscles there, a different kind of stress from her usual.</p><p>Those images under her eyelids — so mundane, yet so affecting to her — don’t disappear immediately like she hoped, so she shuts her eyes tighter for a moment, trying to just will them away from her brain. It doesn’t work, either. So instead she opens them and focuses on the multiple screens in front of her, monitoring the world’s activity in search of anomalies, mentions of incidents, the everyday grit of this new SHIELD she came back to.</p><p>It’s only a few moments afterwards that Coulson joins her next to the comm controls. Daisy is not surprised in the least —well, she is in the sense that she has grown unaccustomed to him and the things he does, how he treats her, like now— and she doesn’t wish for him to change, exactly, but life would be easier if he did. Crappier, but easier. She gives his leg a quick glance as he approaches, she keeps doing that — he doesn’t limp these days, which is a relief, but she wonders if it still hurts anyway, the injury from when she basically dropped the whole Playground on his head.</p><p>His face displays a wordless question Daisy knows too well, an expression all those months alone without anyone to look at her <i>like this</i> couldn’t quite erase from her memory.</p><p>“Full exposé on Quake,” Daisy quotes with a scoff, evading Coulson’s real question. “It barely featured any new information. Even the Watchdogs forums have better researchers.”</p><p>Coulson gives her a long, soft look. Of course he knows she’s only pretending to make light of it. He always knows. She’s forgotten many things, but not that.</p><p>“It was a bit thin on actual content,” he agrees, mimicking Daisy’s fake lightness. “Thankfully.”</p><p>“They’re probably saving my scandalous criminal record for primetime,” she jokes.</p><p>The ongoing dismissal eventually makes Coulson frown.</p><p>He’s not pushy, it’s just — she really, really doesn’t want to worry anyone, least of all Coulson. She also really, really doesn’t want to keep talking about this, because talking about this brings back the image she saw in that segment, an image she thought she would never have to face again. Innocuous, intrusive image.</p><p>“It’s normal to feel rattled,” Coulson says, all casual, like it’s the most regular thing in the world. Then Daisy remembers that this was his job, once upon a time. Take care of the press and public reaction every time a bit of alien tech went wild or a new gifted went rouge, or the other way around. Daisy guesses she is now both those things. </p><p>She wonders how SHIELD would handle Quake, if it wasn’t for Daisy’s past in the organization, in the team, if it wasn’t because Coulson knows her. She is not sure she’d like the answer to this.</p><p>It shocks her to think how much the building still looks like she remembers, as if her memories of the place haven’t been distorted by time or anger at all. Daisy is surprised she has kept them so intact after all this time. There’s something wrong with that, as if it had all been burned or carved somewhere inside her Daisy can’t access to erase. The tv images were new but the pang of complete recognition was decades old.</p><p>She had hoped the nuns had at least painted the facade a different color or changed the stupid front gate. Something, <i>anything</i>. It’s been fifteen years.</p><p>She had felt Coulson’s gaze on her the whole time; he didn’t even have to be in her peripheral vision, she knew he would be watching her face as much as the screen. It made her extra aware of her own feelings, knowing that Coulson was so concerned with them. Which was not exactly a bad thing — even though, again, months on her own have made her completely unused to anyone paying attention to how she feels, nevermind the old shock of how much Coulson cares. Daisy is shocked all over, more so now, and all these months on her own have indeed dulled the muscles that used to be so quick to hide emotions on her face.</p><p>The rest of the agents present thought the whole thing vaguely ridiculous, the corny tone of the reportage — it was not very well done, obviously a quick piece thrown together in the wake of Quake’s latest “feat” and to feed the audience’s new appetite for anything relating to Inhumans, while keeping a very deliberate ambiguous stance (“Heroes or Threats?” promised an ad for a later, more general segment on Daisy’s kind). Mack even said “<i>this is stupid</i>” out loud, turning away from the screen on the part where they were revisiting “Quake’s hidden past”, looking surprisingly bitter for a moment. Of all the people around comms at the moment Daisy guesses Mack is the only one who has an invested interest now that he has started dating <i>one of them</i>, he might have been thinking about some day in the future when the news could be digging into Elena’s past, not just Daisy’s. Daisy felt happy for YoYo, that Mack would have such a reaction.</p><p>Coulson said nothing throughout, staying just as quiet and still as Daisy herself. She could have switched it off, told someone to switch it off (Coulson could have… but no, she has to remember Coulson is no longer Director, that with the exception of Daisy herself he probably holds the lowest level among the team’s new configuration, the new color-coded hierarchy) but she was strangely fascinated, maybe in a sick sense, with what the tv might have to say about her. She hadn’t expected… well, yeah, she hadn’t expected she’d have to sit through images of her old home.</p><p>“Just because the Director is used to the spotlight he shouldn’t have just thrown you to the press like that, at least not without putting some precautions in place first,” Coulson is saying now. He shakes his head. It sounds a bit self-accusatory, as if it should have been Coulson’s job to predict this eventuality. “I’m sorry, Daisy. This shouldn’t have happened.”</p><p>This is not something he hasn’t said before. Right when she re-joined the team, he said that she shouldn’t have been put in that situation. He is always big on Daisy having a choice, and being free to choose what she really wants.</p><p>She shrugs. It doesn’t feel like she should have any right to complain: she is no longer in hiding, no longer running from both the authorities and the Watchdogs. She has now SHIELD’s resources to protect people. If she gets hurt she can go to a hospital. If she needs help she can ask someone on the team. And well, she is standing right in front of Coulson, talking to him, there’s that.</p><p>“It’s not like they can come up with anything solid, I erased everything, you of all people know that,” she says. </p><p>Coulson nods. Daisy had erased everything even before he met her. She erased everything a second time when Hydra came out of the shadows, a third time when she left SHIELD, after Hive. There’s nothing out there. Nothing of her.</p><p>The reason she could just disappear if she wanted is the same reason she could <i>just disappear</i>.</p><p>“How do you think they…?” Coulson starts, stops himself, and Daisy watches him wince, as if regretting bringing it up with her.</p><p>It’s not that she hasn’t wondered about that, too.</p><p>“Probably someone recognized me on tv,” she replies. For a moment she vaguely thought that maybe Miles… but she didn’t want to suspect him like that. Also, there would have been more details had the information come from him, there would have been something about her becoming a hacker.</p><p>“Someone who was in the orphanage with you?”</p><p>“Or someone who worked there,” Daisy says. She doesn’t want to think about fellow orphans like that, either — even though some of them were already cruel like shits when they were kids and Daisy wouldn’t be exactly surprised. “Someone looking to make a quick buck selling this <i>exclusive</i>.”</p><p>“Has it changed?” he asks, as if curiosity for her past has somehow made him forget his extreme tactfulness. “In the video it looked kind of— “</p><p>“Derelict?” Daisy shrugs again. “It wasn’t a first class establishment when I was their guest.”</p><p>She watches something in Coulson’s eyes change, his body pushing the weight on his right foot, as if he is about to take a step towards Daisy.</p><p>“Coulson, <i>don’t</i>,” she says, warning him, waving her hand to stop him, because she knows what he is going to say. Or at least an approximation of it. He’s going to say something thoughtful and caring and Coulson-like and that is a <i>gift</i> and it’s not that Daisy doesn’t know how much that gift is worth (she knows it, intimately, six months of not having anything remotely like this intimately) but whatever his words are going to be they are going to force Daisy to think about it, and remember the images on the screen, and face it all again, after years of running from it, and she can’t do that now. She can’t afford to take care of this right now.</p><p>Whatever Coulson was going to say, he doesn’t, of course, but he looks at her like she would like a bit more of an explanation. Or a reassurance that everything is okay with her.</p><p>Well, no, nothing is ever okay with her, Daisy thinks with the grim humor that kept her sane and alive all year, but she is fine, she is useful, she is here and not back there — in the orphanage from those images, or the many iterations of that feeling that Daisy has found herself trapped in throughout the years.</p><p>She gives Coulson a little smile that is not entirely dishonest — it’s true, those images hurt her and not being able to talk about them with Coulson hurts even more, but they don’t cage her anymore. They’re not her prison. It gives her some kind of hope, this realization, because that means that maybe some day other things will stop being her prison too.</p><p>“This is not a conversation I want to have in the middle of tactical,” she says, gesturing towards the panels under her gaze.</p><p>Coulson stares her down like he knows she is just looking for an excuse to avoid the whole thing altogether. He probably knows, rather than senses it. </p><p>“I understand but…” he hesitates. “If you want to talk about it, later, or— “</p><p>“Thank you,” she cuts him off. And she means it, the thank you, but sometimes Coulson is just… <i>too much</i> for her. He was too much before, already, but after months on her own Daisy is no longer used to dealing with his particular mix of perceptive and kind when it comes to her. Those muscles, like the ones who control the expressions on her face, are out of practice.</p><p> </p><p>+++</p><p> </p><p>She knocks on the door to his office late, way late, but she hopes not too late. She might have only just come back a few weeks ago but she already knows Coulson doesn’t sleep that much — probably for the same reasons Daisy herself doesn’t sleep that much, after the last couple of years, after Hive and everything. </p><p>But Coulson has also had the foresight to leave the door kind of ajar — Daisy doesn’t want to be presumptuous, but she guesses he did it for her, to signal that she was welcome to come in and talk to him if she needed. It’s a very Coulson thing to do, she reflects before knocking. It’s a very Coulson thing to do <i>for her</i>.</p><p>There’s a subtle distinction.</p><p>“Come on in.”</p><p>His office is different here than the one he used to have in the Bus, different from his office in the Playground. More aseptic, more a feeling of something temporary, or easily packed up. Daisy can understand that. Smaller too. Wartime size, in a way. The Zephyr has never felt anything like the Bus and Daisy feels sad and grateful, relieved, for that fact. Because so many terrible things had happened in the Bus. Not that there hasn’t been plenty of terrible things happening in this plane. But a different kind of terrible.</p><p>She finds it funny that, despite his lower level, no one questions that he still keeps a private office on the plane. Most agents remaining in SHIELD are people who used to serve under him, follow his orders, of course they are not going to question it. And from what Daisy has been able to gather in the few weeks back in the organization Director Mace actually leans on Coulson quite a bit, Coulson controls a lot of stuff behind the scenes, levels notwithstanding, so it makes sense that Coulson gets a few privileges out of the deal.</p><p>On the other hand Daisy also notices (how could she not) that his office is bereft of any kind of personal objects, traces that hint this place is Coulson’s and Coulson’s alone. It makes Daisy a little sad to see this. Even the pens on his desk look like regular pens, not the fancy fountain stuff he used to love. He’s such a dork, Daisy thinks he should be surrounded by his collector’s items stuff, even though that is not really who he is anymore, even though he has changed so much.</p><p>Coulson leaves his tablet on the desk, standing up so that he and Daisy are on a level, rather than invite her to sit down. Daisy eyes the tablet, wondering what he was working on. She is still re-learning the inner workings of the team, and not just because SHIELD has changed. It makes her curious about how Coulson’s day-to-day looks like, now; it reminds her a bit of when she first joined up, how curious she was about the man. It feels nice for a moment, thinking about it as re-starting with Coulson, because Daisy is sure he would like to forget so many things, and Daisy would like to be forgiven so many things.</p><p>This time she forces herself not to drop a quick glance to his leg.</p><p>“Okay, so,” she starts.</p><p>Coulson gives her an encouraging nod.</p><p>In front of him Daisy forces herself to remember the image on the screens, and lets herself feel all the stuff she felt when she saw, lets herself hide nothing of that.</p><p>“Seeing that on the news, it messed with my head.”</p><p>Which, duh, it’s evident, but she wants Coulson to know it means something that she’s said it out loud, that she’s admitted it with all the words. She winces a bit as those words fall between them, painful but also a little embarrassing. She’s an agent again, she should be more professional than to let something so small push her buttons.</p><p>“That’s understandable,” Coulson says quietly, almost too quietly, coming around next to Daisy and standing besides the desk. “Nobody on the team could possibly blame you.”</p><p>“I know,” she replies on auto-pilot. She wonders, though. “I just don’t know why I have such a hard time admitting it’s affecting me.”</p><p>“You don’t?”</p><p>He looks genuinely surprised by her words.</p><p>“From the beginning, you’ve never wanted to appear weak in front of the team. Now, even less,” he explains. “You’re always hesitant to tell us when you’re hurting. But since you’ve come back… it feels like you’re working hard to earn your place in the team.”</p><p>Daisy stares him down, raising both eyebrows — she doesn’t like being psychoanalyzed, not even by Coulson.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, realizing, and noticing her discomfort.</p><p>Daisy wonders if he is more direct with her these days, or she is just imagining it (or she spent too long apart and has forgotten how he was before — but she doesn’t think so, it’s not the kind of thing she’s likely to forget).</p><p>“No, please,” she tells him, a little amused. She takes a step closer, until they are both sort of hovering sort of leaning on his desk. And they’re close — his face is close, which is something that still shocks Daisy whenever it happens now, ever since she came back. He doesn’t seem to think too much of it, why would he, and she wonders when it will stop being a shock. She challenges him to go on: “You said we could talk about it. I’d like to talk about it.”</p><p>Coulson is not a shrink, after all. And he is not someone who is going to use the information against Daisy, or manipulate her with it, or dismiss her for it, like practically everybody else in her life. It’s safe with Coulson.</p><p>“But you don’t have to earn your place back,” he tells her, undeterred by her stare. “You never lost it.”</p><p>Daisy lets out an ugly snort. </p><p>“Didn’t I?” she wonders out loud, her tone more cruel than it would normally be, when she is with Coulson. The tone she usually keeps for herself.</p><p>A doubt, precise like a dark cloud, passes over Coulson’s expression.</p><p>“Has anyone said anything— ?”</p><p>“No, no,” Daisy lies, cutting him before he can finish the question, resenting the bullseye he’s gotten here. She would never tell Coulson what the others in the team have said to her — in part because she deserves their angry, hurtful words. She deserves every letter. And in part because she could never do anything to mess with Coulson’s relationship with the team, or push onto him any notion that he needs to intervene on her behalf, defend her or fix things for her. “It’s not the team, it’s me.”</p><p>“That should get better with time,” Coulson says, trying not to repeat objections Daisy has already rejected. He sounds a bit unsure about it, like he wants to ask if things have gotten any better for her about… all the other stuff. Lincoln, mainly, and Hive. Like he doesn’t know how to ask for fear of hurting her more.</p><p>It’s not like he is going to remind her of something she forgot, it’s not like she is not thinking about it all the time. His carefulness hurts more than that, because of the sharp contrast to what she has come to expect. Because he should have reacted the way Fitz, or Simmons, or May did. Even the way Mack did, for bringing YoYo into it. But he hasn’t so far. Coulson’s carefulness hurts, but she can’t bring herself to wish it away.</p><p>“I don’t want to be… that,” Daisy says, pointing outside the door of his office, and vaguely in the direction of the control room.</p><p>She wonders if Coulson gets what she means. It could mean anything — that she doesn’t want to be whatever the tv anchors were saying back then, <i>abomination</i>, <i>threat</i>. What she means is that she doesn’t want to be the person watching a stupid show about her old orphanage and being so affected by it.</p><p>Because she hates it, becoming this person again, after so long. Even if it was only for the seconds her gaze was on that tv screen. This weak, needy person. What Hive did to her has exacerbated it, Daisy is not an idiot; Hive took all those insecurities and hang-ups and used them against her, and used them to make her hurt people. He undid all the work Daisy had achieved in all those years. It’s been many months since she broke free of that control, since Hive was himself destroyed but the version of Daisy he forced to the surface still lingers. She is not sure how to push it down again. </p><p>She lets out a little chuckle. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, talking about it,” she tells Coulson. “Maybe it’s just making it worse.”</p><p>“We can stop whenever you want,” he tells her, casually but his voice is horribly soft, was it always this soft? and it’s the opposite of seeing images of St Agnes on the screen. Daisy doesn’t know what it means, that Coulson is the opposite of <i>that</i>, but it means a lot.</p><p>It’s all self-indulgent, Daisy realizes, it shouldn’t be his job, this. She is supposed to be an asset, an essential ally if not a member of his team just yet. She wants to be that, strong and reliable, and she doesn’t want to be something Coulson has to worry about. Ever. If she is a weapon, she wants to be a perfect weapon for the right reasons. She wants to be the opposite Hive made her into. </p><p>She definitely doesn’t want to be whining about her past to Coulson, because that means she is a burden not an advantage, and if she is a burden she is expendable. She might lose everything again, like this.</p><p>“I’ll be fine, it’s just that… you know when you spend a lot of time blocking something out until you basically forget it’s there? And then it’s really shocking when something accidentally reminds you that the thing exists?”</p><p>“I know what you mean,” Coulson says.</p><p>He rubs his upper left arm absent-mindedly. It’s been over a year and a half since he lost his hand and he’s obviously been doing better and better but Daisy guesses that yeah, sometimes even he must forget, for a moment, and then have to deal with the knowledge all over again. Daisy doesn’t think too much about it, Coulson’s hand is actually one of those things she has worked very hard to block out on her day to day life, because, at the end of it, she knows it was her fault that he lost it.</p><p>He has always been so restrained about it, though, that it’s almost shocking he is mentioning it (by omission) now. Maybe <i>he</i> doesn’t want to be a burden, either, that’s why he keeps silent. That’s it, Daisy realizes. She realizes how stupid she’s been a moment ago, thinking of herself like that. She wouldn’t like it if Coulson did it to himself. So she knows Coulson wouldn’t want it for her, either. Maybe the rest of the world would see her as a burden, but Coulson wouldn’t. </p><p>It gives Daisy permission, this thought.</p><p>“I wish they had shot any part of the orphanage but the entrance,” she says, revealing a bit more than she meant to tell Coulson, now that she has decided it’s okay to do so. “Those gates… Seeing the entrance was always the worst.”</p><p>“Because it’s the first thing you saw every time your foster families would return you to the orphanage,” he says.</p><p>That gets him an eyebrow raise again; even though hearing what she feels out loud hurts a bit, like a weak but sudden slap to the face, Daisy is also a bit impressed at how quickly Coulson got there. Again. Impressed that he pays so much attention to her that he is able to just know these things, almost instinctively it seems.</p><p>“I feel differently about it now,” she tells him, and she does. “I mean, consciously. Now that I know that it was SHIELD keeping me safe as a kid, what Agent Avery did for me, all those times I was brought back. But seeing the place again, actually seeing it… I couldn’t stop the old knee-jerk reaction.”</p><p>It’s true but what she doesn’t tell Coulson is that the way the team reacted to her running away it brought a lot of her old fears back. What she <i>definitely</i> doesn’t tell Coulson is that being back in the team has made all those fears <i>real again</i>, the possibility of rejection in front of her, something she has to think about again after so many months, that in a way it was easier being on her own, because there was no risk. Perhaps, she thinks in retrospect, this is what made it so hard for her to look at those orphanage doors again.</p><p>Here, inside his office, Daisy reminds herself of the dangers of contentment, or getting used to being settled. Of getting used to people. To one person, even.</p><p>“I don’t think there’s anything strange, or wrong, with that reaction,” Coulson says, pensive, and it makes Daisy feel a little bit like a normal person. Then he goes on: “But you have to remind yourself you are not that person anymore, who you were when they brought you back to St Agnes time and again. You changed. You are also a superhero who was saving the world even before you got superpowers. Before SHIELD recruited you.”</p><p><i>Wow</i>, she thinks. And when was the last time she thought something as light as <i>wow</i>?</p><p>“You are great at pep talks, you know,” she tells him, honestly. She grins.</p><p>Coulson returns the smile, and if Daisy didn’t know better she’d say he looks a bit embarrassed about it.</p><p>“No, I think I’m a bit rusty,” he says. “After all, I always try to save my best pep talks for you.”</p><p>Double <i>wow</i>.</p><p>Daisy touches the back of her nape, the knots a little bit looser right now. She is a bit embarrassed too.</p><p>“Is that your not so subtle way of telling me you’ve missed me, again?” she asks.</p><p>Another smile creeps on Coulson’s mouth — but she can tell it’s a complicated one, this time.</p><p>“I wanted to tell you much sooner, with all the words, not just implying it,” he says. “But I didn’t want to pressure you while you were figuring out your future. I wanted you to feel free to decide if you wanted to be here at all.”</p><p><i>Here</i> can mean anything, which Daisy guesses it’s kind of his point. Maybe, she doesn’t want to presume. It’s why, after she basically swallowed an earthquake and saved  city and Mace pushed her in front of the tv cameras, Daisy had said that she missed “some <i>things</i>” not particularly one thing, one person, like she wanted to say. Like she really wanted to say. Because she didn’t want to presume.</p><p>Not that they matter, Coulson’s actual words — well, they matter, a lot, but not for the purposes he is worried about.</p><p>It’s kind of dumb and <i>he is</i> kind of dumb, because it’s not even what he says to her, it’s his whole presence (his whole existence) that puts pressure on her. Though it’s not exactly pressure, and Coulson wouldn’t like that anyway. It’s not pressure, it’s that if she has a choice, if she has a free choice, for what she really wants, not other stuff around it. If she were to answer the question truly. Forget about all that happened, all the hurt she has caused, all the hurt she has caused him, the state of the world, forget that she is Inhuman, forget they are SHIELD, forget the risk she puts him in just by being near him...</p><p>It’s kind of dumb how simple it is, really. The answer. The choice, if she had it.</p><p>“Coulson… don’t you know already?”</p><p>He wrinkles his brow at her. “What?”</p><p>“This is always going to be my choice,” she takes a breath, making it clear what <i>this</i> is, before getting to the important part. “Because I <i>always</i> want to be where you are.”</p><p>She shrugs after she says it, because yeah it’s a bit pathetic how needy she is, but maybe Coulson won’t think it’s such a horrible thing.</p><p>“Daisy…”</p><p>The look he gives her is the most complicated she’s seen on him yet, and it’s so strange on his face, like something he’s never dared tell Daisy.</p><p>His small office suddenly gets a lot smaller.</p><p>She is rooted to the spot, frozen, by that expression. She knows what she wants to do, but for some reason she can’t bring herself to start. Coulson seems to know, or understand, what she wants, what she never thought would happen, and does it himself, taking those last couple of steps towards her.</p><p>Coulson brings his hands to her face and Daisy immediately closes her eyes, absolutely shocked by how the touch feels, and not just because she has forgotten what it was like, being touched like this. Nor just because she believed, until four seconds ago, she would never be touched like this again.</p><p>She wraps her hands around Coulson’s wrists; for a moment, when she opens her eyes, she can see him panic, thinking she means to push him away. She holds tight, pulling him closer, to make sure he knows that’s not the case. She wants to feel his touch under her hands, move with him when the moment comes.</p><p>“You want to be here?” Coulson asks her, his eyes so close and focused on her. This time <i>here</i> means something very specific, different to what they have been discussing tonight.</p><p>Daisy nods. They are both way too freaking shy with each other, she knows, but she wouldn’t want it to change.</p><p>“Always,” she repeats, and it’s corny and it’s true.</p><p>It’s all Coulson needs to bridge the little distance still between them and kiss her.</p><p>Triple <i>wow</i>, Daisy thinks like a loser, when she opens her mouth under a hot, tender mouth. She lets go of Coulson’s wrists and moves into him, wrapping her arms around his back into a loose hug. </p><p>Daisy wasn’t expecting this kiss — a first kiss of all things, and with Coulson, an unpredictable variable on its own — to be this good, especially for such a gentle, careful kiss. It’s nothing like any other first kiss she’d had, and that makes total sense, actually.</p><p>But her body settles so easily against the hug, and Coulson’s lips are surprisingly soft and unsurprisingly good at it, even a tame, light kiss. It’s pretty spectacular, if you ask Daisy, so much that it makes her forget she should feel guilty about it, about kissing someone, someone <i>else</i>, the way Coulson’s touch scrubs everything bad off her, the way it reaches even her past and makes it all better. Then she remembers she should probably feel guilty, but still isn’t.</p><p>Guilt would mean she has any room for anything other than Coulson, and for anything other than this, and this curiosity and excitement about it all.</p><p>He’s so calm about it, like doing this doesn’t surprise him at all, which Daisy wasn’t expecting. She wonders when things changed for Coulson, because she is pretty sure he didn't always feel this way. Either that or he had kept it under wraps annoyingly well. Daisy herself has always kind of had a super crush on him, but she had always accepted it didn't mean anything and that anyway it was hopeless. Maybe Coulson had <i>really</i> missed her, all these months she had been on the run, maybe that's when it had changed. It doesn't matter when, she decides. She's just happy it did.</p><p>“You okay?” he asks, still holding her face in his hands when he breaks the kiss. The gesture feels pretty romantic, Daisy realizes, somehow wanting that for herself, allowing herself to want it.</p><p>Daisy nods. “You?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he replies, his voice strained and soft and a little bit wrong-footed by her question. He drops his hands to her waist, looking flustered, yeah, that’s the word. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting the kiss to be so good, either.</p><p>She looks around for a moment.</p><p>“We should get some of your stuff in here,” she says, gesturing towards his desk. It’s more of a wrist moment, because she is pretty much locked in half a hug with Coulson still. She is not letting go, and he doesn’t seem to mind. Her right hand rests over his heart, a thundering feeling underneath that betrays that Coulson isn’t calm about this <i>at all</i>. It makes Daisy smile, want to tease him. “It just doesn’t look like your office without any of your vintage scraps.”</p><p>Coulson ignores the jab and catches the first part of it instead.</p><p>“<i>We</i>?” he asks. Daisy feels his hand move slowly, distractedly, up her back.</p><p>The mood has shifted so much — Daisy can hardly believe this is just a handful of minutes after she came in, willing to whine about bad memories and feeling unloved. What’s going on now it’s kind of the opposite.</p><p>And it is so weird to think that if an intrusive tv crew hadn’t been looking for a Quake exclusive, if someone from Daisy’s old life hadn’t ratted her out, if she hadn’t see the orphanage gates again… this things with Coulson might never have happened, might never have gotten started. It’s almost surreal, these turns her life keeps taking. </p><p>Wild coincidence or not, she is not going to waste it.</p><p>“If you want me to spend some time around here, that is,” Daisy replies, gently asking.</p><p>She knows she is asking for a lot (too much, the voice of all these months on her own says inside her head) and she watches Coulson’s throat; he swallows, not out of doubt but out of emotion.</p><p>“I want that,” he tells her, simply.</p><p>Daisy slides the hand she had between their chests up Coulson’s body, reaching his face, the pad of her index and middle finger pressing against his lower lip, appreciatively, in wonderment. She really had no idea how good it was going to feel, being close to him like this. She sighs a little, low but audible enough for Coulson to give her a look of curiosity.</p><p>“You might not have wanted to pressure me into choosing SHIELD but… you are giving me a pretty awesome reason to stay,” Daisy confesses, giving him (his mouth, mostly) an appreciative smirk.</p><p>Coulson seems to light up at the word “awesome”, the dork. The lovely dork.</p><p>She wonders if it’s selfish or unfair, or weak like Hive showed her, to have one person mean so much to her, give her so many reasons to go on, stay, be glad to be alive. If it’s a burden, after all.</p><p>“I’m okay with that,” Coulson says.</p><p>And he must be, because this second time he kisses her twice as hard, twice as confident. And for a moment Daisy doesn’t have to block out the bad stuff, doesn’t have to force herself to forget the orphanage and its terrible main gates. It doesn’t hurt so much to remember, right now.</p>
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